


Boundary-Walkers

by parabolica (orphan_account)



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 23:12:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11610933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/parabolica
Summary: Dragons represent the unknown, the untested, the outer limits of human control. It is why they are reserved for marginalia.





	Boundary-Walkers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oneiriad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneiriad/gifts).



> A huge thank you to Sandrine for the beta and the reassurance!

The light is fading.

Athelstan pauses in his work to stretch. His fingers have cramped from so long holding the quill, and an ache across his shoulders is reward for his devotion. Before him on the desk is a page of fine vellum, its lettering complete save for the illuminated capital, which remains pricked and pencilled, ready for the morrow.

Down the side of the page is a mass of twining, writhing forms. Dragons. Wyrms. Curled about with foliage, twisting with one another.

He picks up his pen and resumes inking the elaborate lines. Serpent linked with wyrm tied to dragon. A multiple ourobouros, symbol of eternity. A sign of God’s power, Alpha and Omega, but Athelstan is an educated man and knows it has other meanings.

Pagan meanings.

Serpents of knowledge. Of healing. Of power.

The quill scratches across the vellum. The heady scent of ink, soot and fish-glue and galls. The low murmur of Brother Theodoric, who always recites the words of the gospel as he copies them. The coo of a pigeon on the roof of the scriptorium, the sound of the sea beyond the windows. Athelstan loses himself in the detail of a wyrm’s wing.

His life before he was presented to the monastery as an oblate is as distant and hazy as a dream; a golden time of halcyon days, of endless sunshine and the sea-salt breeze rippling over the dunes. There must have been hunger and sickness and bad tempers, but he doesn’t remember that. With the passing of the years, all rough edges have been worn smooth, leaving him with but one singular memory.

Little more than an infant, he was, crawling upon the beaten earth floor in search of amusements. The light shining through the open doorway lured him, and outside he found all manner of diversions—chickens that fled from him, clucking; an old dog with a greying muzzle roped to a fencepost; grains of white sand dusted over the darkness of the earth. Further afield, he discovered wildflowers and nodding grasses tinted yellow by the sun; he found pebbles and a trail of ants and, lying still upon a large, flat rock, he encountered a serpent.

Settled in a lazy S-shape, it regarded him with eyes unblinking and slitted like those of Satan himself. It stirred, lifting its snout to the air; its tongue whisked out, once, twice. The sunlight turned its dull brown scales brazen and darkened the diamond patterns upon its back. The viper watched him, and he gazed back, lost in wonder at what he had discovered.

He was too young to know any better, to realise that, oftentimes, in beauty there also lies danger. Captivated, he reached for the serpent.

Without warning, it reared back. It struck.

It bit him, between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand. It bit him, and before he could give voice to his shock, the serpent slithered away and was gone.

The sight of his welling blood had startled Athelstan into cries. There was no pain, just a sense of what he now recognised as euphoria. The same emotion that overcame him when he fasted all day and prayed all night. The same feeling he experienced when walking through a storm, ice crackling over his body, his breath freezing, his mind shrunk in hibernation to warm itself on the knowledge of God’s grace.

His siblings had found him and carried him not to the comfort of their mother, but to the village wise-woman. She was not a hag but a young maid, with hair like flax and eyes the colour of chestnuts, and she laughed when Athelstan was brought before her. She took a knife and sliced open the puncture wounds, then set her mouth to his flesh and sucked out the venom.

At length she paused to spit, and her lips were stained with his blood. Her smile frightened him. “The kiss of the wyrm,” she’d said. “If you still draw breath come morning the day after tomorrow, you will survive and be blessed. No serpent will do you harm from that day forth.”

He surfaces from the memory and touches the site of the wound. The scars remain, faint raised bumps on smooth skin. When, under cover of night, he takes himself in hand—a sin, he knows, but all men are sinners, and he always confesses his deeds and does penance—the scars throb and burn, a sweet spur to pleasure, and when he spills his seed like Onan, he imagines not a woman but a very different creature wrapping him round; sleek strength and muscle, the stink of exertion, and a musk as intoxicating as the perfumes of Asia Minor.

Athelstan stifles a sigh and continues with the illustration, tracing his quill along the sinuous curve of the wyrm.

Brother Lucas would not describe this animal as a wyrm; he would declare it a dragon. He claims himself a Byzantine, his guttershot Latin littered with fluent Greek, and thus he is deferred to in matters of exotica. They know about dragons in the East. Brother Lucas says he saw one, once: a great and fearsome creature with wings of bronze that shone in the sun, and from its mouth issued tongues of fire, and its breath was as poison and blighted the crops.

Father Prior gently chides Brother Lucas after the telling of these tales. Dragons do not exist, he says, so reasonably that the brethren listening to him are comforted. Dragons are but a symbol, a warning against excess emotion. That is why they can be drawn upon the holy books, to prove they have no power in themselves but are part and parcel of God’s Will. Dragons represent the unknown, the untested, the outer limits of human control. It is why they are reserved for marginalia.

Athelstan is not so sure. One does not need to journey to Byzantium to encounter wyrms. They reside throughout this realm, and not always in liminal land. A wyrm might be expected to make its nest in the borders with the Scots, but how then to explain the wyrm that makes its home near the holy site of Durham? And what of the wyrm said to inhabit the great rock beneath Din Guarie, but a short distance from here?

He has never seen the Din Guarie wyrm, but sometimes he’s heard it. Hissing. Roaring. Lashing its great tail. It could be the waves battering against the rocks, but he knows better.

Father Prior says that the most dangerous serpent is lust, curling into men’s hearts and biting at their immortal souls. It is meant to be a warning, a reminder to remain chaste, but Athelstan cannot help where his mind wanders.

With a start, he realises the wyrm he’s drawing has a human head. His first thought is, _blasphemy, idolatory_ , but he knows it isn’t. The scriptures both on Lindisfarne and in the care of other holy places depict plenty of human-headed creatures, not all of which are as natural as God intended. He studies the image. It is not a face he knows. He can’t pass it off as a jest against one of his fellow monks. Neither is it the work of idle fantasy, for the face is not comely, but strong and proud and… determined.

Athelstan shivers. The light has gone.

His eyes smart. Soon it will be time for Compline. He slides the page inside his desk. Tomorrow, when the ink is dry, he will scrape down the vellum and obliterate the face of the wyrm.

*

A freshening wind blows from the north-east. White horses gambol across the sea. Spray drifts with the incoming tide, kissing the side of Athelstan’s face as he strolls at the foot of the dunes. His scrip is half full of sea holly roots for the infirmarer. Perhaps he should add some dried seaweed. A goodly variety can be found on this sheltered part of Holy Island, and all are good for either curing the sick or adding to the pot.

The stakes marking the pilgrims’ route are disappearing beneath the waves. When the tide turns, it comes in fast, swallowing up the causeway and turning the mudflats into a treacherous bog. Safe on the beach, Athelstan watches the passage of the water, a serpentine glitter beneath the sunlight as the currents bubble and swirl.

He tastes salt on his lips.

A sound reaches him, a low rumble like that of thunder. He shifts his gaze from the water to the heavens, looking for the telltale smudge of dark cloud on the horizon, but the sky is clear.

The sound comes again. A dull _boom_ this time, repeated at intervals. Like the beating of a drum. Or the beating of wings.

Something blocks out the sun. Athelstan looks up and up. There, in the sky— Hanging like a bird of prey— A creature with wings as vast as sails; a creature with a long, sinuous body, a twisting tail, and an elegant neck.

A wyrm. A dragon.

Athelstan starts backward, his feet slipping on the soft sand. He can’t take his eyes from the beast. It fills his vision, coming closer and closer. He can see individual scales now, flexing like the armour of a mercenary. The updraught from the giant wings forces down upon him, raising a sandstorm that bites into his flesh. Athelstan screws up his eyes but doesn’t look away, more awed than afraid.

The dragon shimmers a myriad shades of red touched with gold, like the curtains of fire that sometimes appear in the night sky. It is huge and muscular, an animal in the prime of its life. It is Leviathan, the twisted serpent that dwells in the sea. As promised in the Book of Revelation, it is a great red dragon, but it has only one head, and two small horns, and it wears no diadem.

This cannot be Satan. It is too beautiful.

The wyrm opens its jaws. Out of its mouth go sparks of fire. The Bible was correct in one aspect, at least.

Suddenly aware of the danger, Athelstan scrambles away. The scrip impedes his progress; he casts it from him. Sea holly tumbles about his feet. He clambers up the dunes, tripping on the hem of his habit. Sea grass slices across his hands, stigmata of a feeble sort. His breath gasps from him, loud and panicked.

A shadow falls across him. Hot breath, tainted the copper-scent of storms. A rumble of sound. The dragon is _laughing_.

It catches him easily, wraps him around with its long tail. Just as in his fantasies, Athelstan feels scales and warmth and the thick, muscular squeeze of possession. Ridiculous to be aroused whilst in terror of one’s life, but he can’t help it, just as he can’t help the feeling that this was preordained.

The dragon turns him around so he faces its maw. He sees glistening fangs and flaring nostrils and iridescent scales. No poison, no fire, just a faintly smoky smell. And then its tongue, long, pink, forked, darts out and tastes him.

Athelstan cries out in mingled shock and pleasure. He wonders if he is about to be made a martyr.

The dragon rumbles again, a quizzical sound this time, and then it releases him. Settling back onto its haunches, it flips its wings closed and sinks into itself… and becomes a man.

“Dear God.” The words fall from Athelstan’s lips. He stares, sways, then drops to his knees in the sand. It’s not simply because he has seen the transformation of beast to man in the blink of an eye. It’s because the man wears the same face as the one he’d drawn on the wyrm in the marginalia of the manuscript.

“Dear God in Heaven, protect me,” Athelstan gasps, fumbling for the Latin.

The man stands there, tall and broad, rough-hewn like an oak. His appearance is outlandish, his blond hair plaited and knotted and crusted with sea-salt. He wears furs and animal skins lashed around with rope, and about his wrists and neck are leather thongs and bones fashioned into adornments.

He is not handsome. His face is too strong for that. He looks fierce. Determined.

The man approaches, uttering a few words in a dark, rasping tone.

Athelstan crawls backward up the dune. He knows this tongue. His mind unfreezes enough to grasp the translation: _You are like me_.

The language is Norse. He learned it months ago so that he might one day take the Word of the Lord into uncivilised realms. Never had he imagined that the uncivilised might bring itself to him.

“I am a man of God. A man of peace.” _Not like you_ , he wants to add. A man who can shift his physical form as easily as another man discards his clothing cannot be a godly being.

“Peace?” The dragon-man wrinkles his nose. “Yes. I believe there is a time for peace. It comes after conquest.”

Athelstan’s confidence returns with the memory of this heathen tongue. He stands to face down this interloper. “Is that why you came here? To rob and plunder? You will be disappointed. Our community is rich only in the wisdom of the Lord.”

“Which lord? Perhaps we may treat with him. I, Ragnar Lothbrok, will speak with him on behalf of my men.”

“You may speak with our Lord only through the medium of prayer.” Athelstan knows he sounds prim. He casts his gaze up towards the sky. “My Lord is Our Heavenly Father, who created this earth and all things in it…” he pauses long enough to flick a doubting look at Ragnar, “including you.”

Ragnar laughs. “It was not your lord who made me, little man, but the gods. A fine jest they played! One of trickery and deceit. Always be cautious in dealings with the gods.” He comes closer, the sunlight catching on the coils of his hair. His eyes are a piercing blue, like water trapped under ice. “It has been said that my mother lay with a great serpent. That I hatched from an egg…”

Athelstan knows of a similar story, but the hatchling was Helen of Troy, not this beast of a man. “Nonsense, of course.”

“Of course!” Ragnar leans in as if to impart a confidence, his eyes dancing. “I did not hatch from an egg. I won my shape another way, by wrestling a demon sent by the gods. It was stealing our flocks and our cattle, and then it began taking our children. I was chosen to be a champion. I tracked the demon and fought with it. The struggle was immense. It lasted many hours. The demon took on many forms, but I held on. Then at last the monster tired and surrendered to me.”

This tale also is known to Athelstan, but with other names and in another place. Confused, he shakes his head. Perhaps, as wyrms span the earth from Byzantium to the kingdom of the Angles, so too do myths and legends reproduce themselves in divers forms.

Ragnar seems to take his silence for disbelief. “I assure you, it is true.” A savage grin splits his face. “I won the right to take the demon’s mightiest form.”

Athelstan sees it about him then, a twist in the atmosphere, the great red dragon shimmering in non-corporeal form with Ragnar at its heart. He blinks and looks away; when he looks back again, the dragon has gone.

“Why would you want to do that?” His voice is not quite level.

Surprise crosses Ragnar’s features. “Would you not take the chance to be something different? To feed your curiosity?”

“Curiosity leads to sin.”

“Is that what he teaches, this lord of yours?” Ragnar’s tone expresses mild disbelief. “A poor lord he must be, to care so little for the needs of his people. A poor father, too. A man should always encourage his children to learn and better themselves, so that they might thrive.”

“And conquer others?”

Ragnar gives a dragon-like rumble of amusement. “Conquest is a way of assuaging curiosity, yes.”

Despite everything, Athelstan is drawn to him. “You said we were the same.”

The humour fades. Ragnar comes closer yet, crushing the sea holly beneath his feet. He smells of the sea, of wild places, of freedom. “We are similar, little man.”

“How?” Athelstan asks. “In what way?”

Ragnar touches his face with a calloused hand. “The serpent joins us. I became a boundary-walker the day I defeated the demon. You cheated death and lived. That makes you a boundary-walker, too.”

Athelstan swallows. He’s trembling. “How did you know about the snake’s bite?”

“I tasted it on you.”

“Taste…” The shape of the word fills his mouth. He sways forward and is caught in Ragnar’s arms. Strength and heat, the musk of exertion. He sinks into the embrace, held tight. The kiss holds not the venom of serpents nor the deadly poison of cobras, but sweetness, like honeyed mead.

A sound rouses him. The church bell, ringing. Not the measured clang of the summons to worship, but rapid and panicked, discordant. The urgency casts Athelstan from the haze of his dream, Icarus flung down from the sun. It is a warning. 

He pulls away from Ragnar but stays within the dragon-man’s arms, looking into the teeth of the wind. Smoke rises from the monastery. Borne on the air is the sound of destruction, of cries and violence, a lack of charity and a dearth of mercy. The Norsemen have come with their longboats, prows carved with the heads of dragons, and they are led by a man who defies all the logic Athelstan has ever known.

He sees the future come to pass before his eyes, plunder and pillage and devastation. He watches as if from behind a veil, as if he is at once part of this world and yet aside from it, a boundary-walker again. He watches as Death comes riding, and it is tainted with sulphur.

The monastery—and his life here—is swallowed up by fire.

He understands then that he has been marked. That he was marked all those years ago, when the viper bit him. He had not accepted the fate expected of him. He had not died; he lived. The same offer is being extended to him now.

The sea breeze carries the stink of burning wood and roasting flesh. It tousles the curls about his tonsure. He faces Ragnar. “Why spare me?”

Ragnar’s eyes are very blue in the sunlight. “Because,” he says with a wide grin, “dragons are always in need of treasure.”


End file.
